128 . Fly Fis " \ Northern Saskatchewan Lake after lake after countless lake Untouched land Freshly caught walleye or pike cooked over a campfire Come on up Canada so MUCH TO GO FOR SaskTravel, 3211 Albert St., Regina, Sask. S4S 5W6 - ...... ..... ... ...... \ " Sunny and free, with all the flavor of the tradewlnds to spice up your lifestyle. A sparkling group that's Invitingly casual and says relax, just for the fun of It. " .... ...... .... .........- .(>;,., . One of seven complete groups of fine casual furniture. Send $3 for the new 54-page color catalog and the name of your dealer. See why people say, "Tropitone. Probably the finest." Tropitone Furniture Company : t ' li!l' tr - It - oe West: 5 Marconi, . Irvine, CA 92714 ! APR.IL 6,1981 named Liberal Democratic Party, which has held power for three decades. As the major cities, including Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe, and Osaka, grew in size, they acquired satellite communities that included company cities dominated by big steel, auto- mobile producers, and other busi- nesses; and as they did so rural values, incl uding devotion to nature, began to diminish. The Japanese have tradi- tionally had a deep aesthetic respect for nature. Nature was something with which they lived peacefully, warmly, and comfortably. But with moderniza- tion and affluence came superhigh- ways, high-rise office buildings, bullet trains, and pollution (though the Japanese have done a better job than most industrial countries in control- ling it), and nature-which may soon be a luxury of poor rather than rich nations-became a victim of wealth. Today, the Japanese, even more than the Americans, have not only a de- structive but, some critics maintain, a rapacious attitude toward nature. They pile their garbage on mountain- tops they have traditionally loved to scale, or dump it in their offshore bays, and they are covering whatever limit- ed amount of open space is still left in this crowded, overpopulated country with supermarkets, tennis courts, and small golf ranges. But the myth that they revere nature endures, and they pay lip service to it, even though the traditional sites and scenes-with some exceptions, such as the beautiful waters and islands of the Inland Sea-have been sacrificed to modern- ization and progress. The economic imperatives that ob- sessively motivate Japan, and that have created such an overweening consumer psychology, cannot be divorced from the many physical, social, and cultural changes that prosperity and growth have brought about. I was here at the start of the Occupation and remember clearly what a wasteland Tokyo was after the long months of constant fire bombing. Many parts of the city were flat rubble, without a house standing. People moved about like ghosts, searching for homes, clothes, and food, and large numbers of others had gone to the countryside to escape the bombs. It didn't take long before the country started to rebuild, and it has never stopped. Nowadays, the ride into downtown Tokyo from the new N arita Airport, which takes from an hour and a half to two hours and a half, depending on the traffic, is like an ex- cursion through an endless industrial .<;:.